The Rut (Warriors 102, Suns 106)

Sunday’s 102-106 loss to the Phoenix Suns might as well have been a repeat showing of a game that wasn’t entertaining the first (or second, or third) time around. Poor defense, careless turnovers, questionable intensity — all flaws that have been on display for the last three weeks of Warriors’ basketball. The team’s quality play to start the season was new and exciting, but they now appear to be stuck in an all-too-familiar rut. With each loss that follows this predictable pattern, one question becomes more urgent: What is Mark Jackson doing to fix the problems?

There’s no doubt that Andre Iguodala’s absence hurts this team. But his absence isn’t a carte-blanche excuse for every mistake or failure. Opponents target and abuse David Lee on defense, and he no longer seems capable of winning those points back at the other end, yet Mark Jackson makes no discernible adjustment in his minutes. Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes are far weaker defenders than they were to start the season, and Jackson likewise is playing them just as much — if not more — than before. The entire team is guilty of careless turnovers when they can afford them the least. But the same players make the same mistakes in one game after the next. The fact that the Warriors made miracle comebacks in some of their lackluster performances seems to have reinforced their belief that they can recover from their mistakes, rather than spurring them on to tighten up their performances and not to make the mistakes in the first place.

The Warriors could have done one of ten things differently and won Sunday’s game. A sharper rotation, a crisper pass, an earlier substitution, or a more patient shot. Instead, they squandered a chance to take a game on the road from a team that is ahead of them in the playoff hunt. More than a quarter of the way through the season, the Warriors can no longer dismiss the success of teams like Phoenix as quirks of the schedule. The Suns had 8 fewer turnovers (12 vs. 20) and shot nearly 2 percentage points better from the floor (44.3% vs. 42.5%). The Warriors gave away the ball when they needed baskets, and gave the Suns open looks when they needed stops. Put simply, the Suns executed better than the Warriors. And Mark Jackson did nothing to disrupt Phoenix’s success.

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Case in point: Channing Frye is an NBA player because he can do one thing very well, make open three pointers. David Lee repeatedly left Frye open on the perimeter. It might have been worth it had Lee actually been helping on defense, but he usually just ended up in no-man’s land — too far away from the ball handler to meaningfully slow penetration and too far from Frye to recover once the ball was kicked. Lee made this same mistake every time he was on the court. Either Jackson didn’t tell Lee to stay home or Lee ignored the coaching. If the former, Jackson is kidding himself when he talks about the Warriors as a defensive team. If the latter, why was Lee allowed to stay on the floor, particularly in crunch-time? His abysmal work on the high pick-and-roll resulted in two consecutive wide-open looks when the Warriors desperately needed a stop to complete their comeback.

The frustration of Lee’s consistently horrid defense was compounded by Jackson’s unwillingness to go back to the players getting him stops. Draymond Green stayed on the bench for the middle 8 minutes of the second quarter when the Suns blew open the game. Toney Douglas and Kent Bazemore both changed the game defensively during their runs, but were never seen or heard from again. Andrew Bogut languished on the bench in the final 2 minutes (after the threat of intentional fouling was gone) when his mistake-correcting presence in the key would have allowed the Warriors’ perimeter defenders to play their men more aggressively. And even though the Suns had gone small, Bogut had better luck closing on the perimeter earlier in the evening than Lee did. The Warriors have players capable of playing defense, but Mark Jackson hasn’t responded to the Warriors’ defensive struggles by increasing their roles and, with the exception of Green, hasn’t used them in place of poorer defenders during crunch time.

Jackson seems resigned to the Warriors’ poor defense rather than interested in changing it. He opened the second half with the team playing zone — a de facto admission that his starters couldn’t guard the Suns in man-to-man coverage. He could have started Green in place of Lee or Douglas or Bazemore in place of Thompson or Barnes, but instead tried to slap a band-aid on an open vein by zoning. It took the Suns about two possessions before they cracked it for wide-open jumpers and easy lay-ups. Similarly, Jackson left Lee in during crunch-time — likely based on the hope that his impact on offense would outweigh the damage done on defense. But with Lee’s offensive game essentially reduced to put-backs — almost everything else gets swatted away or clanks off the iron — he’s costing the Warriors far more than he’s giving them. Mark Jackson may think he’s bolstering the confidence of his team by sticking with the status quo, but he’s fielding a line-up of confident losers.

At the other end, after early season problems with the bench’s offense and stagnant experiments with isolation after isolation, Jackson’s game-plan has been stripped down to a one-note approach: Get Stephen Curry the ball and let him shoot. It’s not a crazy approach. Curry has been so tremendous on offense that he’s carried the Warriors back from the dead in two games they should have lost (Toronto and Dallas). But in many others, including this one, his heroics weren’t enough. Jackson’s decision to play Curry all 24 minutes of the second half looks more like desperation than a vote of confidence. Curry’s ability to penetrate or beat his man off the dribble, let alone play defense, suffers as his legs wear out. A quick breather at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth could have made the difference when Curry went to beat the Suns’ defensively-excellent P.J. Tucker for the game-tying shot in the final 30 seconds.

When Iguodala returns, the Warriors may get back to beating mid-level teams like the Suns. The hand-wringing may stop. But this stretch of games has exposed the remaining Warriors and their coach. Whether due to lack of will or skill, there are deeply flawed defenders on this team. When Jackson puts them on the court together, they doom the Warriors game after game to fighting from behind. Despite all the sound-bites about the team’s priorities and identity, Jackson is not taking the steps necessary to make the Iguodala-less Warriors better defenders.

If we could just add LeBron to our lineup, Jackson could really show he was a great coach.

Our Team

Agreed. Just thinking the same thing.

dr_john

Very good game for Lee so far, movable defense not burned much

coltraning

I rest my case that Curry and AI are a lethal combo. Only time will tell, but early signs are confirmatory of previous mythological performance…

coltraning

I know…Mike Brown went from genius to bum ALBJ

Zume

helps to be playing the Pelicans at home

coltraning

and you could count in months how soon they would fire Spoelstra absent LBJ…

coltraning

oh my my my, steph to AI

coltraning

damn, doc, it’s his best game of the year so far…he can only elicit a very good from you? Tough crowd…

Camelot

I see what you did there Curry, great half, Dubs up +18!

coltraning

WOW! This team reminds me of something almost mythological from the deep recesses of our mid-November collective unconscious…I know I’ve seen them before somewhere.

coltraning

So I know it is only one 1/2 and I am sure that fevered pelican blog posters are completely dismissing the unibrow’s absence as a factor, but even without JON, with AI back, this team looks beautiful and legit 9 deep…

What a difference 2 days makes…
48 little hours
All is well w AI back
and the skunks turn to flowers…

Our Team

AI back is important but this looks like more than that. I think the coaches finally gave these guys a swift kick in the pants. Much better energy on D. And look at the new/old David Lee?!

dr_john

Was nice for Lee to do the Bucher minute, been a while since the dubs went into the locker room on a high.

El Topo

Love Dinah!

coltraning

really? So they were just mute or kind like Stuart Smalley during the absence of AI? hmmm…

Zume

All of the above. I know we like to simplify things but it is coaching, defense and Iguodala. All of the above along with home cooking against the Pelicans = confident we can win this one and have the bodies so we can rest. We don’t have to conserve our energy because we will play 40 plus minutes etc..

We still need Klay and Barnes to play like Klay and Barnes can play. We still need the bench to continue to develop by giving them real time to develop. Is MJ going to make good decisions with the talent he has or wear them out so that we get other injuries.

So Lee get a double-double in 1st half, with 4 ORBs and 7-11 shooting. Curry nets 17 pts., 8 assists and only 1 TO in first half.
These guys need to be enched…not performing up to LBJ standards, perhaps?

My mind sometimes boggles on this blog.

Zume

Thanks for the song, wow, don’t sing em like that anymore….yesterday I was blue…it’s heaven when the warriors win.. the difference is…

El Topo

Happy days are here again…soon even Lee will be praised, maybe as much as Speights.

coltraning

Well, this is clearly Lee’s best game of the season and I could not be happier. But I have been not exactly a lone voice in the wilderness, bro, but a pretty small group of us have pointed out the clear and stark difference in this team when AI and Curry play together. Really, sometimes it is that simple. Not lack of effort, not bad coaching, but simply having one of your 2 best players, players who are completely complementary, missing for the 14 games you went 5-9. Sometimes a star is just a star, said noted hoops fan S Freud.

coltraning

you have replaced me as D lee’s biggest supporter;-)

coltraning

Now to administer the kill shot…

Camelot

Smith all star..

Our Team

We can get into a discussion of why the Warriors of the past three weeks have looked so much worse than the Ws of last year, if you’d like. If you are saying that Jackson didn’t mishandle this team at all over the past three weeks (that this was all a result of AI being out) I’m not buying. AI being out illuminated some things that are more difficult for us to see when he’s in there (and our talent is simply overwhelming against a team like this). One of those was the coaching. Another was that KT and Barnes, while very talented, still have a long way to go in terms of bball IQ to fully contribute on O and D.

coltraning

THAT’S the way you drive to the rim, Klay…NICE!

coltraning

I’m not asking you to buy anything. I am stating my opinion, based on 45 years of watching and playing hoops and watching this team closely and studying the evidence and listening the the various opinions on this blog and elsewhere. that’s all I can do, If you don’t buy it, fine…no worries.

Camelot

DLee the White globetrotter..

coltraning

some things don’t change, like needless Curry fouls on layups

Camelot

+25!

coltraning

Damn! David Lee took some Wheaties or HGH or something today…maybe he got inspired by El Topo’s fervent defense. I mean you KNOW they read our comments and opinions religiously, especially Reverend Jackson!

Camelot

Curry 26/10, DLee 16/16

coltraning

how in God’s name is that a foul on Curry?

Zume

I would like to officially take full credit for turning this ship around. It was NOT Iguodala, it was ME! I said a prayer and God spoke to the preacher LOL.

Our Team

I want our coaching staff to match the talent we put on the floor. When it doesn’t it should rightfully be called out. Jackson can improve and grow into his job just as a young player can as he gets more experience. But he has to grow.

coltraning

Thank you, Zume…I would like to thank you on behalf of Warriors fans…

coltraning

OT, it is not like I don’t understand your points. I am a reasonably intelligent man and observer of basketball. But you are not going to convince me. This same team with the SAME dazzling ball movement and smothering defense and SAME coach as before AI went out, it’s the SAME team that looked so wretched in his absence. Unless we are in the freaking huddle or at the practices or in the locker room, we are simply engaging in armchair speculation with no dispositive evidence . As Barbara Ehrenreich said about the conspiracists, we don’t need to engage in speculation. The evidence is dramatic that the team is exponentially better when AI and Curry both play. But then I am not going to convince you either…

coltraning

as much as I love this team, there is only so much of this unit I can take. Not bad, just dull…

coltraning

Now when does Jackson take out Bazemore and put in the competent players again? Now?

coltraning

ahhh. seems like old times. the competent players give the Ws a 25 point lead and the incompetents lose 12 points off it in 5 minutes…it IS the 8-3 team from all those weeks ago…

Zume

Welcome Coltraning and all Warriors fans reading this here (2).About time I got involved. Could only let it slide so far. Call in the horse.

coltraning

On behalf of the blog I would like to personally thank you…

Camelot

D Lee hurt there goes his trade value..

Our Team

Speights looked good again tonight.

Camelot

D Lee on w/ TRoye..

El Topo

If the stats begin to show that dubs do better when he’s off the court, I’ll turn on him in a SF minute.